Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

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All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

News

Well loved Monty’s Deli is closing in Hoxton

London salt beef classicist Monty’s Deli is to close its Hoxton restaurant at the end of July. It will mean only the Market Halls iteration, a grab-and-go unit rather than a standalone sit-down space, and a stall in Old Spitalfields Market will remain.

The business shared a statement on Twitter, which said: “We are truly sorry to announce we are leaving Hoxton Street at the end of July and our last day of trading there will be Sunday 28th.”

The closure is bad news. Reporters think Monty’s Deli, which founder Mark Ogus and Owen Barratt opened after a successful crowdfunding campaign, serves “hands-down the best place to get deli food in London.”

Others said: “The attention to detail is fantastic: the pickles are tiny and piquant, the spicing spot on, the potato latkes shatter crisply.”

Better news is a secondary note on Instagram, where Monty’s mentioned “exciting projects for the summer”.